Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin recently announced that since February, a state security task force has arrested 521 migrants his office described as “criminal illegal immigrants.” According to a prepared release from Youngkin’s office, more than 130 of those arrested were members of gangs like MS-13 or Tren de Aragua.
But the release did not indicate what led authorities to link those individuals to gangs. It also did not provide any information on where the 521 arrestees are, what happened to them after their arrest or what charges they may face. A state spokesperson referred VPM News to Erik Siebert, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and the head of the task force; Siebert’s office declined to comment.
Immigration advocates voiced their outrage over the arrests.
The government press release “provides no details on who these 521 people are, or why and how they were detained,” a spokesperson for the Legal Aid Justice Center said in a prepared statement. “We have yet to see any specific evidence showing how any of the 521 people detained were determined to be ‘criminals.’”
In late February, Youngkin signed an executive order calling for creation of joint task forces out of state agencies to enforce immigration law by cooperating with federal officials. In the state release, the Virginia Homeland Security Task Force is described as consisting of about 200 agents from 11 state or federal law enforcement agencies — including the Virginia State Police and Virginia Department of Corrections.
And while several federal agency heads — U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement head Todd Lyons — lauded the task force’s efforts, immigration advocates repeated numerous due process concerns.
Virginia code allows state law enforcement officers to conduct warrantless arrests after receiving confirmation from ICE that an immigrant is in the country illegally and has been previously convicted of a felony under certain circumstances. But state law says that any person arrested under that provision “shall be brought forthwith” before a magistrate or similar authority to determine whether there is probable cause that they committed a crime.
If no probable cause is found, the law says, the person arrested is to be released; if probable cause is found, the magistrate is authorized to issue a warrant permitting the federal authorities to take the individual into custody within 72 hours.
The Youngkin statement does not indicate whether the task force is operating by the process set out in Virginia code, or by another process.
“Due process matters, and it really matters that people are not detained illegally,” said Luis Aguilar, the Virginia director at CASA. “People regardless of their immigration status are entitled to due process,” he said Tuesday.
Aguilar said that he believes the task force’s activities are a simple and straightforward way to shift attention away from the economy. One federal jobs report says that more people lost jobs in March in Virginia than in any other state. And the S&P 500 has fallen 11% since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, amid global uncertainty around Trump’s plans to institute heavy tariffs on imports from most other countries.
“Distraction, distraction, distraction,” he said. The state government “wants to help out the president by distracting the public. They want to distract people from one, the economy, and two, the cuts to federal jobs.”
